


stay 'til the am

by himemiyaa



Series: taz: balance [14]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Sad, and makes me cry ok thanks, because their relationship is IMPORTANT..............., but it's primarily about lucretia and taako, some brief mentions of lup and angus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 19:05:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14858528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/himemiyaa/pseuds/himemiyaa
Summary: a sleepless night on the moonbase leads to lucretia and taako spending some time together in the bureau's kitchens.





	stay 'til the am

**Author's Note:**

> listen........ sometimes you listen to one direction and you cry about lucretia and taako, and that's okay

The light of the moon -- the real moon -- shines through the huge, domed window of Lucretia’s quarters, reflecting in the mirror of her vanity. It isn’t so bright that it hurts. The light on this planet typically isn’t. After all, there’s only one sun here, and the sky’s color makes it easier to handle. Still, on nights when she’s already struggling to sleep, it’s distracting. She could draw the curtain, but she knows it wouldn’t help, and so she lies there staring at the ceiling for some time.

Guilt swirls in her brain like a thick fog. That’s why she can’t sleep. It colors everything she does with a white sheen, paints her interactions with everyone. Especially those three.

She remembers the day they met, the Starblaster crew. Barry, looking soft and nervous, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. Magnus, shirtless and laughing, six foot five and bright-eyed. Merle with flowers in his beard and mispronouncing everyone’s names (and she’s still not sure if it was a bit or perfect sincerity.) The twins, fingers entwined. The captain.

And herself, nervous and quiet and so, so young.

When the thoughts become too much, they threaten to overwhelm the numb facade she keeps up even when alone. Lucretia pulls herself out of bed and over to her vanity (white oak, like her staff.) She looks exhausted. She always looks exhausted, at least to herself. She’s run herself ragged over the past twelve years. Having Magnus, Merle, and Taako back has brought some joy back into her life, but with every iota of joy comes seven tons of grief. She collects herself: straightens the sparkling silver septum piercing she wears, removes the silk bonnet covering her braids, changes out of her deep blue nightgown into her business regalia. She can’t show vulnerability to anyone in this organization without the risk of the whole tower of cards coming tumbling down around her feet.

Lucretia leaves her room with the Bulwark Staff clutched in hand. It’s a catch 22 -- a comfort object and an ever-present reminder of her sins, both against her family and against this world at large. She walks in silence through the halls and the campus of the moonbase, her only company the stars shining above her. She calculates: it’s just past Candlenights. It’s been half a year since Midsummer and the eyes in the sky. It won’t be long before the stars start disappearing into the void, consumed whole by something somehow _still_ beyond her understanding.

She holds hope, still, that something can be done to reverse it all, to replace the worlds that the Hunger took away. With Lup gone, someone has to carry that torch. Hope hurts. It’s excruciating. But she needs it to go on.

Her heels click along the tile as she enters the cafeteria, but she’s only a few steps in when she freezes in place. There’s scent coming from the kitchen, sweet cinnamon notes floating through the air. It smells like home, it smells like peace, it smells like Taako on the Starblaster at four AM. She knows it’s him by the scent and then by the humming she hears as she draws closer. It’s a tune he shouldn’t remember. It’s not from this world. An Elvish folk song, one she knows his aunt taught him.

He keeps leaving space for a second voice. Lup’s voice. Lucretia nearly crumbles to the ground then and there.

She stays there for a moment, listening to his voice and his pauses, inhaling the smell of his cooking. He’s getting back into the swing of things, she knows. Those macarons were the first thing he’d cooked for a group since the catastrophic end of his cooking show. She read all of the reports she could on that: vagrant chef kills 40. Something about it has never added up to her, but she has no way of knowing what really happened.

Lucretia taps her staff against the kitchen door to announce her presence, stepping into the kitchen with her back straight and her jaw set. Calm. All gravitas. No emotion. “Taako,” she says, and hears a hundred years of calling his name -- in grief, in joy, in disbelief, a thousand different feelings tied together with shining white thread.

“Oh, hey,” he says. She sees him bristle -- not noticeably, not to most people, he’s better than that, but his ears flatten just so. “You’re up late.”

“So are you,” she replies. “What are you making?”

(As if she doesn’t know the answer.)

“Cookies,” he says simply. He’s cleaning up mixing bowls, tossing utensils in the sink for someone else to take care of. That’s a habit he picked up here, she notes -- presumably during his time on Sizzle it Up. That assistant of his, he must have done the chores. Taako’s always been somewhat laissez-faire, but he pulled his weight with chores on the Starblaster. In the early morning, once, before dawn had touched the sky, Taako had told her about his and Lup’s time in caravans.

“You gotta be useful,” he’d said. “Otherwise you’re out. Can’t really blame ‘em, huh?”

Lucretia moves to a cabinet and pulls out a kettle to fill and place on one of the unoccupied stoves. “You have a kitchen in your dormitory,” she notes. She made sure he did, just in case he wanted to pick things back up. The idea of Taako not cooking felt wrong. She’s glad to see him back at it.

“Yeaaah,” Taako drawls. “Don’t wanna wake up the boner squad with these sick smells.”

She chuckles. “Of course. Would you like some tea?”

“Yeah, why not?” He stretches, cracking the vertebrae in his back loudly. “You can, uh, uh, taste these bad boys when they’re ready,” he adds. He must be tired -- he sounds nervous and he doesn’t look at her as he says it. It breaks her heart. Lucretia remembers a Taako who foisted his cooking on everyone, who looked them dead in the eyes (for a moment, anyway) and told them his churros would change their lives.

“That sounds wonderful,” she agrees blankly. She fetches two types of tea from another cabinet -- chamomile for herself and raspberry-peach for Taako.

“Oh, hey, how’d you know?” he asks.

“Intuition,” she lies.

Lucretia sits down at the table nearest to the kitchen door, which Taako props open with another chair before joining her. The scent of cinnamon hangs heavy in the air around them, nostalgic and sweet and bittersweet. The Bureau’s cafeteria is big, with tables for hundreds of employees rather than a crew of seven. Still, Lucretia feels like they’re at home. Home is gone, she reminds herself. The Taako she knew back then is gone, too; the elf sitting across from her with sleepy pink eyes looks like him and sounds like him, but they aren’t the same. This Taako is crueler than the one she knew. There are other things, too, but that’s the one she can’t wrap her head around.

He was never _kind._ He was cold and defensive and entirely aware of it, entirely unapologetic of it. But he cared deeply, underneath that ice, and it could always be melted by Lup’s fire.

Lup. Lup. It all comes back to Lup, it always does. Every day it’s harder to keep hope that she’ll come back, that she’ll come home. Lup had never called it the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet. That was an invention of Lucretia’s. A name with gravitas, but a name with hope, too: the hope that she would return from her own ashes.

Taako yawns.

“So what are you doin’ up?” he asks. His ear flicks sleepily. He doesn’t care, and she knows it. This Taako isn’t her friend, and he certainly isn’t her brother. This Taako doesn’t remember flopping on the couch next to her, plucking her quills out of her fingertips, telling her to get out of her head because she’s boring him. He doesn’t remember the way she held his hand after Lup’s first death, braided his hair while he was practically catatonic with grief. He doesn’t remember teaching her, teaching _all_ of them, the tune that he’s still humming under his breath, still leaving breaks that aren’t there for a second voice.

Lucretia catches herself just before she starts humming along. “I would imagine the same as you,” she says. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Yeah,” he says with a shrug. “I’m bad at that.”

She wonders if it was a nightmare. Those plagued him during the century. If not that, perhaps it’s the sleeping alone -- he always did prefer to sleep next to Lup, when he could; failing that, Magnus or herself. Even Barry, in a pinch. Alone was hard for him.

“That’s a shame. I’m sure Garfield has some sleeping aids,” she offers. Taako shrugs and wrinkles his nose.

“Nah, it’s whatever. Gotta stay alert.”

She doesn’t ask why.

“What time is it?” Taako asks, stifling another yawn.

Lucretia reaches for the pocketwatch tucked into her robes. “Four-- four twenty,” she says. She keeps a straight face until Taako snorts, and then she can’t help but crack a small smile.

“Nice,” he says. He rests his forehead on his arms where they’re crossed on the table. The kettle whistles. Lucretia stands and moves back into the kitchen, pouring the hot water into two pots, which she brings out to steep in front of them. She brings out two mugs, too, both made by a certain boy detective at the recently-opened Chug-n-Squeeze -- one reads “#1 BOSS” and the other “WORLD’S BEST MAGICAL MENTOR.”

Taako snorts when he sees it. “I thought I tossed that,” he says, and despite the callous tone in his voice she can hear an inkling of fondness, she can hear that he’s bluffing. She thanks the universe for Angus McDonald and his influence on Taako. He doesn’t soften him entirely, doesn’t repair the broken, foggy psyche she created for him, but he’s something. He instills some sense of tenderness in the elf. He always had something of a weakness for orphans, Lucretia thinks, for troubled children in general. With Angus in particular, she knows he must recognize a kindred spirit -- lonely and wildly intelligent, with a thirst for knowledge and deeply-entrenched principles, though Angus’s tend considerably more lawfully than Taako’s ever had. Where Angus believes in truth and justice, Taako believes in survival. And, though he wouldn’t admit it, loyalty.

“Someone must have scavenged it from the garbage,” she says.

“Yeah,” he agrees, turning the mug in his hands. The white ceramic contrasts against his deep brown skin, catches the light even in the dimness of the dining hall. Angus chose a sparkly purple paint for the text, painted in the shaky hand of an eleven-year-old trying very hard to write neatly. It’s hard to make out all the subtleties of Taako’s expression at the best of times, but even in the shadows she can see the upturned corners of his mouth. He must be awfully tired, she thinks. She doesn’t mention it. “Shoddy craftsmanship. But, you know, he tried, I guess. Which of these is mine?”

Lucretia pushes his teapot towards him and he pours himself a small amount, taking a sip to test the strength and temperature before he fills his cup. She pours her own tea, then pulls a flask from the depths of her robes and pours a small amount of gin in as well. Taako raises an eyebrow at her. “That one of those sleep aids?” he asks.

“You could say that,” she replies.

He pushes his mug towards her and wordlessly, she pours a glug of gin into his tea too, nearly overfilling it.

“Didn’t, uh, peg you as much of a drinker, Director.” He pauses, then smirks. “ _Lucretia_ ,” he says. He thinks he’s found a fun button to press, a way to tease authority the way he always liked to. Hearing her name in his voice sends a hot knife through her heart.

“I have secrets the likes of which you cannot imagine,” she says wryly. Taako lets out a peal of high-pitched laughter.

“Fuck, alright. That’s a little melodramatic, don’tcha think?”

“Absolutely not.”

Taako laughs again and takes a drink. “I mean, I don’t doubt that you got secrets,” he says. “We’ve all got secrets. Besides, this place is shady as hell.”

Lucretia stiffens, just slightly. “Have you lost faith in the Bureau’s mission, Taako?”

“Nah,” he says, lazily waving a hand. Rings glitter on his thick fingers. He’s fully dressed, like she is, and Lucretia wonders why: is it impression management, or did he never bother to change into pajamas? Either sounds likely. “But you _did_ singlehandedly steal half the goddamn planet’s memories, yenta. That’s textbook shady.”

She forces a smile. “I’ll give you that,” she says simply. The oven dings and Taako makes his way to the kitchen. While he’s gone, she takes a long drink directly from her flask.

It’s too much like it used to be. There were too many sleepless nights on the Starblaster, too many times where their only solace was each other. She remembers midnight conversations with all of them, with her whole family, but they were most frequent with Taako. It was those conversations that really brought the two of them close together, those conversations that led to a deep friendship. Taako championed Lucretia during the century, supported her endlessly. They were similar, after all -- reserved and pragmatic and endlessly devoted.

Taako was the one who convinced her to pierce her nose one cycle. It was in memory of Taako that she had it re-pierced here on Faerun.

He returns from the kitchen with a tray full of steaming cookies and an unreadable expression on his face. He sets the tray down on the table between them and stares at them, looking for any defects, any sign of wrongness in the final product.

“They smell wonderful,” Lucretia says encouragingly, and Taako’s head snaps upwards to look at her. There’s a wildness in his eyes. She recognizes it as fear. He quickly tries to play it off with that easy, lazy grin of his, but she sees how tense he is.

“Of course they do,” he says. “I made them.”

“May I?” she asks, and she sees him calculating.

“They’re still too hot,” he says with a sniff. He’s putting it off. He isn’t her friend, and he isn’t her brother, but he doesn’t want her dead.

If only he knew what she’d done to him, she thinks, she knows he would.

“I’ll wait, then,” she says.

They’re quiet for some time. Taako’s tense and too tired to cover it with jokes. Lucretia’s drowning in guilt. It isn’t a pleasant combination. It isn’t a healthy one. She thinks about leaving, but she can’t -- not when he’s in this state. She hates seeing fear on Taako’s face. It’s not that she’s never seen it before, it’s not that it looks unnatural on him -- it doesn’t. He’s cautious, reticent, anxious by nature. But she wants, as she’s always wanted, to soothe him. She wants, as she’s always wanted, for Taako to feel safe.

She watches him doze off. Dawn breaks over the horizon of the moonbase and the cookies grow lukewarm and then cold. Lucretia lifts one to her lips and takes a bite. It’s perfect -- crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, even despite the temperature. She stands from the table. “Taako,” she says quietly, and he snaps to attention.

“Fuck,” he says, short of breath. “Did I fall asleep?”

“You did,” she says. “The cookies are delicious.”

Relief washes over his face. “Of course they are,” he says. He stands up and picks up the tray. “Better get ‘em outta here before the, uh, uh, starving masses steal them all for breakfast. Gotta make sure Agnes gets some. And the boys.” He’s babbling, half-asleep and overwhelmed with feelings he refuses to deal with.

“Of course,” she says, nodding her head. She leans against her staff. He begins to leave. “Taako?” she calls after him.

“Yeah?”

“Get some sleep,” she says.

Taako snorts. “Whatever you say,” he says, and then he’s gone through the glass doors to the hall, heading towards the barracks where she knows he’ll bang on the door to Angus’s single room to wake him up.

He used to do the same thing to her.

Lucretia takes their mugs back to the kitchen and casts Prestidigitation to clean them. She leaves Taako’s dishes in the sink -- she doesn’t have time to deal with them before the breakfast rush comes in, and she needs to be at her place in her office. She walks silently as the Bureau begins to wake up around her, nodding at the employees she passes on her way, calm and collected and numb as ever. She walks into the throne room and sinks into her seat (white oak, like her staff.) “Good morning, Davenport,” she says when he crosses the threshold to assume his place at her side.

The weight of her memories feels impossible to bear at the best of times. Sometimes Lucretia wishes she could forget like everyone else has. She’s exhausted. But there’s nothing to be done. Her staff, newly strengthened with the power of the Philosopher’s Stone, thrums with energy in her hand.

Madame Director still has work to do.

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed, please consider leaving a kudos and a comment -- feedback means the world to me and keeps me writing. also, feel free to stop by my tumblr, [@softshelltaakos,](softshelltaakos.tumblr.com) where i cry about lucretia adventurezone every day of my life and am always down to talk taz. thanks for reading!


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